Abhishek Rungta

I recently came across Google Answers (http://answers.google.com/answers/) and found that they are no longer accepting questions.

So Google closes down its Google Answers service. Though I did not sense this coming, but once I saw it, I felt this is a logical step Google has taken. I anticipate the following reasons:

1. Google does not want to concentrate its energy in “people intensive” business models as they are not very scalable. They are “technology focused” and backed with solid processing infrastructure.  They will like machines to do the work!

2. Google Answers is a pay-and-use model. This makes it “less popular” compared to free services available. Again the money Google makes out of it is so small that it does not make good business sense to continue with this.

Yahoo on the other hand has a free service which has gained much more popularity than Google Answers, putting up a tough competition.

3. I saw few answers which were very well researched and were done for only $10-$20. I doubt that they were done with an intention to make money. The fees was kind of a reward or a way to say “thank you”. It was not purely business driven.

4. Google in itself is a “Answering machine” and therefore it does not need Google Answers! (as suggested by my colleague, Mukul)

Overall, I feel that Google Answers was not fitting into the long term strategy of Google and a stiff competition in the same market by Yahoo (which is a very successful in leading people backed systems dating back from its famous directory) made them retract from this business.

Links to few discussions:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum35/3728.htm
http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/3171877.htm